Appologies for the pitiful number of posts today, but I've been busy making some site updates... If you're just here for the
games read the short version of what these are, or you could even skip that and get on with some gaming, but if you are a sad g33k, such as myself, read the full version:
Short Version
I've improved the back end of the site so that you should see less error messages (hopefully none at all), and a side effect of this is that you might notice a difference in the way the pages on the site "build" in the browser, especially if you are on a slow connection, or you are viewing a larger page (
like one with many comments). That's it.
Full Version
As much as I was blaming the constant error messages on the site on the MS Access database I use for storing all posts and comments (I will move this over to SQL Server one day), in the end I had to admit that some inefficient coding was also to blame, which didn't matter so much back in the day, but now
the site traffic is really increasing it was starting to be a real issue.
First task was to move the results of some common database queries into Application variables (thanks to
devguru for the reminder on how to use these properly). This cut out at least 3 database queries for every page viewed, less trips to the database = increased efficiency.
Next I cut down on the time recordsets and database connections were open. I think this was the major issue on the site. I did this by loading results of most queries into arrays of objects (see code snippet in the pic above), and then writing out the contents of these to the screen, rather than keeping recordsets and connections open while content was written out.
Finally I did a quick review to make sure all objects, connections, and recordsets were dropped correctly after use. I'm normally quite good at this but there were a couple of major omissions. I also added a few more "Response.flush" commands to make sure more content gets to the screen when it is available, so screen content starts building quicker on the browser even if the whole page isn't ready.
That really is it. If you spot any issues let me know, I've already spotted, and corrected, a couple of bloopers, like the comments coming out in the wrong order (all those "first!" comments were showing "last!"), but any feedback you have would be handy. For now, it's no more coding in the evening for me, I need my sleep.
G
After the
logo competition you've probably spotted by now that I've updated the site with the new logo, but have you spotted that the icon of me (thanks Scottish Graeme) is on every page now? It's not hard to find, especially for all you point and click fans, even though the tab key cheat doesn't work, and no one has posted a walkthru yet. If you click on the link on me, when you find it, it'll take you to the updated
about page. Oh, what a busy bee I've been.
PS. On an unrelated subject, but while I'm doing a personal post, if you're thinking of sending me a link to "The Ugly", forget about it. That game is just too sick for me too post, for reasons I'm not going to dignify the game by going into.
PPS. For the new icon of me on the site pages I haven't been able to test the new site style sheet, that positions it, on a Mac yet as I'm away from home, all seems to be ok on IE, FF & Opera on a PC, but if you see a problem on your Mac please let me know. Ta.
[
thanks for extra work chris and scottish graeme].
OK, remember the
Lazylaces Logo Competition? First of all I'd like to say thanks for
all the entries. I didn't expect to get so many, and I was amazed to see how much superb effort had been applied. I'm truely impressed. Anyway I've now reviewed all the entries and selected a winner, and from what I've seen it's the popular choice too, the clear winner for me was
Chris H's entry, which takes the $30 prize. I think I also mentioned at the time that I'd actually like to use the winning entry on the site, which I'm still very keen on doing, but there are a couple of small changes I'd like to make before doing this, which I've asked Chris about doing - so watch this space, or rather the one at the top of the page.
Also, I didn't mention anything about any additional prizes when I announced the competition, but I was so pleased with Scottish Graeme's (no relation!)
icon picture of me that I'm also awarding additional prize of $15 to him for his superb work, and the icon will be making an appearance somewhere on the site soon.
Anyway, those are all the winners, thanks once again to everybody who entered, your hard work was much appreciated.
Welcome To 2006 everyone, hope you had a great
2005, but here's to a happy new year and plenty more games. Hopefully you've all recovered from your celebrations last night by now, I'm just about back in the land of the living, but I would like to thank
The Prince Of Wales pub for my huge hangover today. Hope you all had a good time, and I'll have some new games for you soon.
The
Lazylaces Logo Competition is still underway, with entries open until 28th Dec 2005 at 09:00GMT. Read my
original post for all the rules, competition details and, most importantly, what the prize is. I have now also put together a page of the
entries so far so you can see what you are up against - I've included all the entries regardless of what I think of them - do you think you can do better?
I've just done some work to update the blue stylesheet version of this site - you can switch between the site stylesheets at any time by using the
red and
blue squares at the bottom of the righthand column (or use the hyperlinks I've just written out). Anyway, that's not my point. While I was doing the work I got to thinking that it's about time I updated the lazylaces logo...
The original, and still in use, logo was created when I took an image from the results of a google image search for "laces" and then had some kind of artistic accident with it in Paint Shop which I still don't fully understand. Anyway it's meant to show some shoes tied in a lazy fashion - I have no idea if it succeeds - I stopped thinking about it about 3 years ago. What I'd like to do is replace it now, and if someone with more artistic ability than me can help, all the better, so in that vein I propose a lazylaces logo competition... here are the details (which I am
not making up as I go along - honest):
Prize
The creator of the best entry will receive a token to the value of $30 for Amazon.com (or the nearest GBP equivalent for Amazon.co.uk). I'm afraid my budget won't stretch any further. In addition if I love the entry enough it will become the new logo for the site. All other reasonable, and probably all awful, entries will be featured on the site with a credit.
Guidelines
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The logo should either be, or be able to fit within, a banner 630 x 80.
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In GIF or JPG format, with as small a file size as possible.
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It would be nice, but not essential, if the words "lazy" and "laces" were somehow represented.
Rules
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The Closing Date is 28th Dec 2005 at 09:00GMT.
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Artwork may be altered by me for use on this site.
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All submitted artwork may be distributed and used by lazylaces.com free of charge.
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Graeme's decision is final.
Ok. That's it I think. Hopefully someone comes up with something cool, otherwise the new year will see me having a painful session with Paint Shop. I'm sure I'll do an update before the closing date so look out for that [
idea from a comment by Oxyacetylene].
Just a quick update on the "should there be a lazylaces forum"
poll I ran the other week. I can't work out how to close off the poll, but I'm taking the votes as of now as the final result, so, in reverse order:
-
Don't care - 172 votes.
-
Yes - 473 votes.
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No - 506 votes.
So, no forum for now. Maybe I'll rethink this at some future date, but for now I'm happy with the result. As a number of you pointed out I'm busy enough as it without patroling forum threads half the day which was something I hadn't really thought through. I would like some kind of general posting/chat area at some point which I thought I could do using a forum, but maybe I'll put my thinking hat on and see if there is another way of doing this.
PS. Thanks to
Quimble for the quick and easy polling - a sinch to set up and so easy to use - recommended (and free) if you have any kind of poll to do.
Well I'm still not well, but I've had enough of sitting around feeling sorry for myself and watching really bad daytime television from under the bedcovers, so it's time to post some stuff...
The first thing that cheered me up this week was
Samorost 2, for me it's the gaming equivalent of a big *hug*, but some other news has penetrated the lazylaces bedcovers (ooo-er). The current issue of
Web User magazine, "The UK's biggest selling internet magazine", featured Lazylaces in their "best new web sites" review! Oh the fame. Admittedly by "featured", I mean "was tucked away in a byline on page 17", but you have to take what you can, and they did describe me as an "old favourite". Thanks guys. Next time I'm aiming for at least a half page spread ;o)
Turns out the rather odd and delayed train journey into work I experienced the other week was due to the fact that the train I was on only just
managed to stop 300yds short of ploughing into another train. You'll be glad to know that your diligent on-the-spot reporter slept through the whole "potential major disaster" (it was 6.30am), decribing it later as "a nice lay in". So I live on to make another post...
I've been thinking about creating a lazylaces forum, something that would have a general forum to let people chat in, and maybe threads for some of the more popular games (where I believe the site comments get a bit unwieldy). What do you think? The site comments would still exist (in their current format), I'm hoping a forum would complement these and rather than replace them. The forum would require registration (I have enough trouble with spam on the comments), but I don't think anyone would have a problem with this, would you?
Anyway if you want to check out the sort of thing I'm thinking of look at
snitz which is the free forum code I'm thinking of using (I really don't have time to do all that coding myself), and if you'd like to express you opinion add a comment on this post, or better still try the first lazylaces poll:
You were wondering what to get me for Christmas weren't you? Well as a public service I can tell you that the
SqueezeBox is exactly what I want. Being able to wirelessly stream any music file from a computer in Lazylaces towers to my stereo system? Yes please. Stop that $299 burning a hole in your pocket and get ordering so it arrives in time. For reference the black version with the WiFi option is the one for me. That is all. I'm off to watch for the postman now. Oh, and one other thing, the fact that it's playing an obscure track in the marketing pic that I own means it's destiny, doesn't it? [
via OhGizmo!].
After sending a day a while back tinkering with creating web pages for mobile devices I never really finished off what I was doing, but I did get the comments made on this site available on some
mobile pages. Since then I've checked the comments virtually everyday using
my phone when I'm away from my PC (on the train mostly), so I thought it was finally time to clean up the pages and advertise them to all. So, as of now, the site comments are available on your mobile phone, simply point your WAP/GPRS device to:
The pages are written in
XHTML-MP, which means that the pages should be readable from most modern, internet enabled, mobile devices, although I've only tested them from
my Samsung (which uses the
Openwave browser). You should be able to see the pages from a normal web browser as well, but obviously they don't look too good as they are formatted for devices with tiny screens (and the cool soft key links won't work either).
Anyway if your try it out on a mobile device I'd love to hear if you have any feedback. I'm already planning to add automatic redirection for mobile devices from the main site address to the mobile address, and, if I suddenly get lots of time (unlikely), I'll also look at expanding the mobile content available.
TTFN
G
